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Yesterday James and I went out cycling with our friends. The weather forecast was promising rain but it just ended up being overcast the whole day which was perfect!

There was a flurry of messages that morning discussing whether to change the route or cancel because of the weather. Brian said the cold was worse than the rain and Will said the cold was fine and he was just going to wear a t-shirt and shorts. Brian told me that he messaged Stephan privately and told him not to listen to Will because he was crazy.

Which was true because Will ended up having to buy a jacket on the way to our meeting spot. (When Stephan saw Will’s augmented outfit he smirked and said “nice jacket” haha)

Incidentally Will bought the jacket at Sports Basement, which is where James tried on this cunning helmet:
The original intent was to cycle to Stinson beach via Muir Woods and the Panoramic Highway but due to my shoddy navigation we ended up climbing Mount Tam instead.

James and Stephan shot way ahead of us. I was a little bit faster than Will on the climb but in all fairness he was pretty shaken because he’d crashed his bike at the start of our ride. Brian also looked like he was having a pretty hard time because he has a super heavy bike so sometimes he’d have to get off and walk.

Part of the way up I double checked the route directions and it turned out we were way off-course. Like we shouldn’t have done any of the uphill segments. We waited for Brian to catch up and I was like “Brian you are going to hate me …”

At that point we had to make a decision whether to keep going up to see where the road went or whether to backtrack and get on the route we’d originally intended. Stephan wanted to keep going because he thought it would be “pathetic” if we only did part of it. James wanted to go back down and do the original route. Eventually we decided to keep going because we thought we were almost there, and James finally agreed.

So we turned the corner, saw how much mountain there was remaining, and as he started cycling James wailed “I don’t want to go anymore! I changed my mind!”

He and Stephan still got there way before the rest of us and sent us smug photos while they waited.The road got progressively worse and worse and we eventually realised that all the cyclists we saw were on mountain bikes. We asked some bikers for directions and they showed us a fire road we could take to get down the other side.

James: This photo isn’t at the top but the important thing is that it looks like it is.This is where we actually ended up stopping. You can see there is a fair bit more to go but the it was all gravel and rocks by then.

James, Stephan and Brian all really enjoyed the descent but the rocks made Will and I really nervous.

The views were so beautiful! Stephan said (and I agree) that the fog really makes it feel more mountainy. By the time we got back onto Panoramic Highway there were a lot more cyclists and we were all more than ready to start heading back.

We had lunch at Napa Burger, which seems to be our thingnow. At the start of the day Will always says that he’s sick of Napa Burger but by the time we get to Sausalito he decides that Napa Burger actually sounds pretty good.

The hill heading out of Sausalito felt so brutal, and by the time we got back to Russian Hill we had to walk all the hills. James wheeled both of our bikes and he was still walking faster than me. =(

I looked it up afterwards and there is a route for road cyclists to go up Mount Tam so maybe we’ll try that someday (definitely not anytime soon though). Plus we still need to knock out that Stinson Beach loop!

Last Sunday we went hiking with Daphne, Chris, Lisa and Cagri. It was a beautiful sunny day – perfect hiking weather, which I’m learning seems to be almost every day here.

The drive up was pretty packed, but I think there were enough different trails that no individual trail was particularly busy. This is us at the start of the hike.

image from Chris

We intended to do the Rock Creek loop but there were a lot of crossroads and the trail wasn’t well-signed (which was weird because it wasn’t a remote area – at some points we were walking next to cars on the road). I think we managed to stay on the trail for most of it, but we made a wrong turn somewhere in there because we finished much faster than we should have.

Never mind, there were so many hikes in the same area that we just started on another one!

image from Lisa

We had a peek at the Mountain Theater where they were rehearsing what looked like Peter Pan. The construction was super elaborate and you could see the water from the top seats.Then we kept randomly walking. It was a pretty easy hike through meadows and then forest. I preferred the forest parts because we weren’t in the sun as much.

After the hike we drove to Sausalito for lunch at Fish., a super popular cash-only restaurant. We got there around 1:30pm and there was a massive line.It took a long time to get to the front, and the line stayed out the patio gate until around 3pm. At least you could buy drinks while you waited, so everyone got beers and I had a nice refreshing water.

James and I ordered fish and chips and some BBQ oysters. At just under $60 for the two of us it was pretty expensive, especially for a cash-only place!

The food was great though, and the portions were generous. I couldn’t finish mine and had to give James one of my fish and a big handful of chips.Stuffed, we went home where I napped until it was time for us to go to Eliot and Michelle’s place to watch Game of Thrones and eat brownies.

It was a pretty busy Sunday but it was nice to get out and explore a bit. =)